MALAYSIA and Iran may not make headlines for their friendship very often, but the two countries have quietly built a relationship worth knowing about.
And somewhere in one of Iran's most storied cities, that friendship has been immortalised in the most unexpected of ways.
Is there really a street in Iran named after our very own Kuala Lumpur?
Verdict:
TRUE
There is indeed a street named after Kuala Lumpur in the Iranian city of Esfahan, one of the country's most celebrated cultural centres.
The Kuala Lumpur Avenue in Esfahan was officially named on June 24, 1997, as a gesture of goodwill reflecting the bilateral ties between Malaysia and Iran, according to the Kuala Lumpur City official website.
Esfahan is Iran's third largest city and one of the most celebrated in the Islamic world, home to Naqsh-e Jahan Square, a Unesco World Heritage Site that was laid out in 1602 under the Safavid ruler Shah Abbas the Great.
The square, whose name translates as "Image of the World," measures 560 metres long and 160 metres wide, making it one of the largest public squares on earth, according to the Unesco World Heritage Centre.
So celebrated is Esfahan that Iranians have a famous proverb about it: "Esfahān nesf-e jahān ast," meaning "Esfahan is half of the world."
The street naming was also part of a formalised sister city relationship between Kuala Lumpur and Esfahan, established in 1997, making it one of Kuala Lumpur's most enduring international city partnerships.
Kuala Lumpur returned the favour less than a year later, with a road in the heart of the city officially renamed Jalan Esfahan on March 30, 1998.
Jalan Esfahan, located in downtown Kuala Lumpur between Jalan Raja Laut and Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, is one of the city's older roads, believed to have existed since the late 19th century, according to the book Kuala Lumpur Street Names by Mariana Isa and Maganjeet Kaur, published by Marshall Cavendish in 2015.
It was originally known as Straits Road, likely named after the Straits Trading Company, before being renamed Jalan Selat on April 24, 1980, and finally Jalan Esfahan in 1998.
As a footnote, Kuala Lumpur is not the only Malaysian connection to Iranian cities. Shiraz, home to the tombs of the Persian poets Saadi and Hafez, also lists Kuala Lumpur as one of its sister cities, according to Iran's Mehr News Agency.
Sources::
1. https://kualalumpurcity.my/
2. https://www.penang-traveltips.
3. https://www.thenutgraph.com/
4. https://irandestination.com/
5. https://isfahaninfo.com/
6. https://whc.unesco.org/en/
8. https://en.mehrnews.com/news/
